Ross Miller is a visual artist whose work integrates art into the urban landscape to create community engagement in public spaces, and define place for private reflection within public environments. The ideas evolve by examining the site’s use, social history and ecology to create public artwork that makes direct connection to the site, heightening one’s experience of being in that specific place. Sited in publicly accessible locations - urban squares, parks, schools, subway tunnels, highways, or city streets - the work evolves through collaboration with residents, community groups, landscape architects and other artists. Projects range from landscape and urban scale installations to intimate hand held sculptures.

According to the Boston Art Commission's website, "The Boston Art Commission, established in 1890, exercises legal authority to approve and site new public art on property owned by the City of Boston. Woven through the urban landscape, site-specific artworks identify Boston as a place with long history and a great capacity for innovation. These artworks, both permanent and temporary, range from traditional and new media public art pieces to municipal design elements, such as wayfinding systems and artistic lighting. In addition, the Art Commission has care and custody of all paintings, murals, statues, bas-reliefs, sculptures, monuments, fountains, arches and other permanent structures intended for ornament or commemoration on City property. It is the conviction of the Boston Art Commission that, in order to engender and support a thriving artistic consciousness within the city, community involvement shall extend beyond everyday appreciation to meaningful engagement in the creation, evolving interpretation and ongoing care of artworks throughout Boston’s neighborhoods."

Over the past 375 years, the site we now know as Faneuil Hall has been dramatically transformed, from salty tidal marsh to harbor wharf to active urban plaza. In order to build the original Faneuil Hall, the colonists filled in parts of the surrounding water with dirt, creating additional land. The site was expanded again several decades later. Numerous sections of the city's current land were created through landfill, including most of South Boston and the entire Back Bay. In fact, colonial Bos...

Over the past 375 years, the site we now know as Faneuil Hall has been dramatically transformed, from salty tidal marsh to harbor wharf to active urban plaza. In order to build the original Faneuil Hall, the colonists filled in parts of the surrounding water with dirt, creating additional land. The site was expanded again several decades later. Numerous sections of the city's current land were created through landfill, including most of South Boston and the entire Back Bay. In fact, colonial Boston was less than half the size the city is now. A new public artwork in the South End entitled LandWave, will mark the narrow isthmus that once led visitors to Boston.

Artist Ross Miller demarcated the original Boston Harbor of 1630 by etching the old shoreline onto the present site. Included are images of materials that might be found at the high-tide line - sea grass, shells, fish, and old rope. These elements have a subtle yet profound effect, bringing the geographical boundaries of the past to our feet in the present. Courtesy of Boston Art Commission.

This past shoreline may become the shoreline again in the future with the impact of rising ocean levels as a result of global climate change.